Definition of Schema

Schemas are the various theories we hold about the world we experience. The following web page explains the gist of Piaget's concepts related to schemas. There is a charming and effective slide show on schemas and schema changes (look on the web page for the stick people). Use the arrow that points to the right to advance the presentation. [Probably many people have schemas about web page navigation, but there may also be people on this website who are less familiar with how the web works. In order to be welcoming to those folks, this website tries to include instructions that help web newbies have a good experience.]

Website that Explains Schemas in More Detail

Schemas and Schools

We all (everyone who is in a school--students, teachers, principal, secretary, custodians, parents, student teachers, etc.--come to school with different sets of schemas because we all have different experiences with family, culture, cognitive development, and education. For example, any person whose had a parent involved in construction is likely to have schemas about woodworking and other kinds of construction, while someone who grew up in a family of sports fans is going to have a lot of schemas around sports-related statistics. Both types of schemas can be the basis for learning math (whether that person is a 4th grader working on decimals or a teacher in grad school in a statistics class...).

Implications

The implications of schema theory include:

• Since everybody has a wide range of schemas, new experiences can be built on those schemas that help the person to assimilate new understandings of the world.
• Since not everybody has the same set of schemas, then information that build the necessary schemas for learning a particular thing should be provided. This is where computer technology can be very useful because there are web pages that explain almost everything in the world that can be explained. This means that a wikipage such as this one can review information about schemas through using someone else's web page as the main content. Finding these pages is a matter of creating a good search.
• When a person lacks a schema, that person has a double set of work to do--to work with new schemas and to develop the foundational schemas all at the same time. For example, new speakers of English in a school learn math in English which means they are working with math schemas but may not have enough English language schemas to be able to represent what they understand about math concepts.
• People can be embarrassed by not understanding things, so they may not communicate their learning challenges. Providing information that can be accessed privately will help people to learn and gain/regain background schemas without having to let other people know about where they are struggling. This page is an example of that. Many readers of this page will have learned about Piaget and schemas in undergraduate Educational Psychology classes, but will not have remembered details when encountering this page. The above web page provides a quick review to help reactivate schemas and the format of this information being online means that users of the web page can encounter or reencounter Piaget in private.